14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (better known as DARPA) are now busy trying to use technology to turn people into the Incredible Hulk, sort of.
Mind you, they have absolutely no intention to turn us all into green monsters with serious attitude issues. What they want is to make it possible for us to heal ourselves much like this superhero does, which is actually kind of cool.
No need for gamma radiation
In case anyone was wondering, DARPA's plans to give us out-of-this-world healing abilities do not involve gamma bombs or anything of the sorts. On the contrary, they boil down to developing a device that monitors health and promotes healing.
This device would have to be implanted into our body in order for it to work. Thus, the scientists behind this project envision that, once inside us, it would keep tabs on what our organs are up to and aid healing in the case of infections or injuries.
“The technology DARPA plans to develop through the ElectRx [Electrical Prescriptions] program could fundamentally change the manner in which doctors diagnose, monitor and treat injury and illness,” Program Manager Doug Weber said in a statement, as cited by Live Science.
What he meant is that, should this state-of-the-art device actually be developed and implanted in a whole lot of people, the world's population would stop depending on pharmaceutical drugs as much as it currently does.
How exactly would one such device work?
Information shared with the public says that this one-of-a-kind research project boils down to toying with a biological process known to the scientific community as neuromodulation.
As detailed by DARPA scientists, neuromodulation is a fancy word for the peripheral nervous system's work checking up on internal organs and seeing what they might be up to, and regulating response to disease and infection.
When we get sick or suffer one injury or another, this process can go a wee haywire. The result is that, instead of helping us get back on our feet, neuromodulation can turn against us and weaken our immune system, maybe even cause inflammation and pain.
The device that DARPA has in the works would put neuromodulation on a tight leash and encourage healing. More precisely, electric impulses originating from this device would force the nerve patterns that are in charge of repairing the body into overdrive, thus helping the body heal itself at a rather rapid pace.
“Instead of relying only on medication – we envision a closed-loop system that would work in concept like a tiny, intelligent pacemaker,” Program Manager Doug Weber explained how this implantable device would work.
“It would continually assess conditions and provide stimulus patterns tailored to help maintain healthy organ function, helping patients get healthy and stay healthy using their body’s own systems,” he went on to detail.
DARPA expects that the device will be small enough for doctors to be able to implant it in a person's body using nothing but a needle. Should things go according to plan, such devices could soon be used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and systemic inflammatory response syndrome.